


the enormity of my desire

by brucewaynery



Category: Marvel
Genre: (knowledge of the movie is absoloutely not needed. i am very sorry mr soderbergh), Breaking Up & Making Up, Getting Back Together, Heist, M/M, Ocean's Eleven AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24275101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: "Mr Rogers, what do you think you would do, if released?"
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 111
Kudos: 136





	1. what would you do?

**Author's Note:**

> how's quarantine? have an ocean's 11 au i've been working on, on and off, for the past few weeks. more to come! (title, im afraid, is from a richard siken poem (for the longest time i thought it was silken??))
> 
> (i completely forgot to add this earlier, but a lot of the dialogue and some of the action/description is directly from the [ocean's eleven screenplay](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/oceans_11.pdf))

Steve walks into the grey, cinderblock room, in the same fatigues he’s worn for the past two years and drops down into the single fold-out chair in front of a row of people from the board who’ll forget him within ten minutes.

“Good morning,” one of them, the lady in the centre, says.

Steve nods and replies, “Good morning,” because Sarah Rogers may have raised a criminal, but she raised a (relatively) polite one. And one of his buddies back in the cellblock explicitly reminded him to be on his best behaviour or else he’d have no chance of getting parole.

“Please state your name for the record.”

Steve looks directly into the lens of the camera, “Steven Grant Rogers.” He wonders if Tony might watch the tapes later.

“Thank you. Mr. Rogers, the purpose of this meeting is to determine whether, if released, you are likely to break the law again. While this was your first conviction, you have been implicated, though never charged, in over a dozen other confidence schemes and frauds. What can you tell us about this?”

Steve shrugs, “As you say, ma'am, I was never charged.”

Don’t admit to anything before they show they have proof, one of the first rules he learned. Though he supposes he has to commend them for at least trying to get him to admit to something.

“Mr. Rogers,” a different one, says, and Steve can tell they’re already getting impatient, _best behaviour, Rogers_ , “what we're trying to find out is: was there a reason you chose to commit this crime, or was there a reason why you simply got caught this time?”

Steve has had plenty of time to think why he’d let himself get caught, plenty of visits from Sam and Nat telling him why he got caught, hell, even his lawyer had told him. He’s had plenty of time to make peace with it: even the best let emotions get in the way. Despite the reputation he’d built up over the years, he is only human after all.

“My husband left me. I was upset. I got into a self-destructive pattern,” Steve says, as nonchalantly as possible. Left, not divorced, a tiny part of him, a tiny part that he’s gotten used to shutting down as fast as it flares it, hopes. Leave the emotions at the door, probably the very first rule Erskine taught him, even before the two-finger-pickpocket rule. 

“If released,” finally, the last one speaks, the one closest to the door, “is it likely you would fall back into a similar pattern?”

“He already left me once, I don’t think he’ll do it again just for the kicks.”

The members of the board look uneasily between themselves, “Mr. Rogers, what do you think you would do, if released?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty for reading i love u all <33
> 
> tumblr: brucewaynery


	2. an old friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's a free man. He goes to the place that feels closest to home, the closest he'll get without Tony, and finds an old friend in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another day, another chapter of steve being vaguely sus and criminal, what will our hopefully reformed ex-con do next?

There’s a certain type of comfort he gets alongside all his personal possessions and the form that declares them officially his and legally obtained. Not homely, not exactly, but like he’s his own man again. He signs the form, slides it under the glass, and receives a manila envelope for his troubles.

“Came in last night,” the guard behind the counter tells him, already moving on to the next guy.

Steve slides his finder under the flap and tugs out a stapled set of papers: **FINAL DECREE OF DIVORCE.**

A ring, gold, inscribed, falls out into Steve’s palm with it.

The guard who leads him to the changing cubicles glances over his shoulder, “Missus couldn’t wait, huh?” 

Steve shrugs, “I’m a free man now.”

As efficiently as he can, Steve tugs on his civilian clothes: suit jacket, suit pants, white shirt, no tie, top two buttons undone, and wingtips. There’s no mirror, but he still stands with his shoulders back and straightens out the cuffs - the old skin feels good, if a little loose. He contemplates wearing the ring - he should want to start a new life, a clean life, maybe helping troubled youths reform, maybe reconciling with Tony, he shouldn’t wear it: rings are often far too symbolic for their own good.

He hands the godawful orange fatigues to the guard, who leads him to the gates, the precipice of freedom. He lingers there for a moment after the gates grind open, hovering, letting the wind whistle past. The world out there isn’t pretty, and the view isn’t particularly pleasant - being on the inside for so long had almost allowed him to forget that he’d spent the last two years of his life in New Jersey. Almost. The glaring, graffitied sign to his right reminds him immediately. 

If anything, it’s his strong and immediate desire to leave New Jersey that lets him call the courage to step out into free America.

Among the hum of conversation, the dings and the thunks of the slots, the whir of shuffled cards, the splash of a drink… in the buzz of a casino, he's home. As close to the general concept of it as he’ll ever get in the absence of Tony, anyway.

He catches a flash of red hair at the blackjack table and makes his way over there - she’s not exactly the friend he came here for, but close enough. He slides into the booth as he greets her, “Evening, Natasha.”

If he shocks her in the slightest, she doesn’t let it show, instead gesturing to her nametag, “You must have me confused for someone else,” she says coolly, “my name is Yelena, see.”

Steve nods, getting up, “Right… my mistake, this table’s cold, anyway.” Who said prison hadn’t humbled him?

“Sir? The lounge at the Grand gets busy around 1, if you’re interested,” Natasha tells him with a smile.

Steve taps the table, smiling back, “Thanks.”

Overtop the New York Times he’s pretending to read, Steve watches the faceless clock tick slowly closer to one - there’s still a couple minutes and Natasha doesn’t believe in being early. He scans the front page: plans to raze one of Fury’s - well, Loki’s now - hotels, accompanied by a picture of a scowling Fury (not that he has any other faces, Steve’s pretty sure he’s seen him smile exactly once when he got too into character in the Looky-Loo they pulled in Belgium) and another picture of Loki, with Tony at his arm, radiating smugness and generic assholery.

Steve takes a sip of his bourbon to calm himself. Tony can - should, really - do whatever he likes with whomever he likes, it’s not Steve’s place to say, anymore.

“Catching up on recent events?”

Steve lowers the paper, “They kept us out of the loop, inside, Yelena.”

“They tend to do that. Natasha Romanoff would have caused too many red flags,” she says, and it’s explanation enough, though Steve hopes, for her sake, that she hadn’t burned through all her aliases just yet. “You just get out?”

“This morning,” Steve answers with an almost self-deprecating grin, but now isn’t the time for melancholy and introspection and regret.

Natasha recognises that, and asks, “And already turning over a new leaf?” gesturing to his drink and whereabouts.

Steve gives her what he hopes was a withering look that conveyed just the right amount of exasperation - in his defence, he’s slightly rusty at friendly banter. By her returning look, he rightly assumes that it may have been just a touch too far… murderous. Regardless, he gets to the point, “Where is he?”

Natasha rolls her eyes, “And here I thought you were here to visit an old friend.”

“Nat.”

She just about refrains from sighing aloud. “Last I heard he was teaching the up and coming youth of LA how to play poker.”

“Last you heard?”

“You know him, he's not the most… talkative.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “You fought.”

“We disagreed. Why?”

“I need him, and you. And a few more people,” he doesn’t want to say his plan directly to her when they’re like this; alone with no witnesses. She could see through him clearer than even Bucky, probably better than Tony could as well.

Natasha gives him a look he swears she pulled straight from his own mother, despite never actually meeting her. “You have something planned. Already?”

“You kidding? I just became a citizen again.”

She leans over, takes his glass, and drains it, “Ради бога.” 

Of course, he has something planned already. 

At her look, Steve can’t stop himself from grinning and something else settles in him. He’s missed this, God, he’s missed this. He pulls a bill from his wallet, tucks it under the glass and gets up, “You coming?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope u had a good time, remember to eat a vegetable and/or fruit + drink a water <3  
> tumblr: brucewaynery
> 
> ++ Ради бога = for god's sake
> 
> any predictions about what went down betwixt our favourite soviets?


	3. an older friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve collects another soviet!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you're all having a good day xx

Just before their flight for LA leaves, Steve finds a payphone to call his probationary officer, gesturing for Nat to go on ahead. 

“Officer Grayson? I’m Steve Rogers, just out, I’m meant to check in with you… No, sir, I haven’t gotten into any trouble. No drinking, not even a parking ticket, sir… I wouldn’t even think of leaving the state,” Steve carries on listening to Grayson, letting him talk as he wonders about Tony. One of his prison buddies told him not to waste any good thought on any lovers he had, “ _They moved on by the time the judge convicted you, maybe when the officer slapped cuffed on you, but definitely by the time you buttoned up that jumpsuit. Think about ‘em when you rub one out_.” The other guys had laughed and told him to get used to being a bachelor again. Steve knows that Tony stopped loving him long before he’d been dragged away in cuffs. Tony stopped loving him when he’d realised Steve had been a shitty husband.

The dial tone knocks Steve out of his sombre thoughts and Natasha’s hand on his elbow drags him away, “You’re making me see James for the first time in two years, you better be 100% about this.”

“You need to tell me about what you did to Bucky,” Steve says, he knows just as well Nat that maybe he’s not, exactly 100% about what he had planned, hell, he can’t even be sure that the people he needs want to work with him. But Nat trusts him, and Bucky made his promises a long time ago. He’s not going to screw up this time.

“I’ll tell you that when you admit why you really took _The Lament_.”

Steve huffs a laugh. She knows why he did it, she knows that he doesn’t even regret it, even if it landed him in behind bars, but he’s always told her, and the agents who interrogated him, and the lawyer who questioned him, and Tony when he’d asked, on his single visit to the prison, “It’s my favourite myth.”

Natasha shakes her head and mutters something under her breath Steve gladly decides to ignore.

Natasha takes him to a Hollywood club teeming with D-list actors and half-celebrities. 

“You’re kidding.” He got parole for _this_. 

Natasha just shrugs. Steve is almost pleased that he could see that she’s enjoying this. Almost, if it weren’t for the fact that Bucky had somehow landed himself here. He’s disappointed and he was in _prison_.

“Stay in the car. I don’t want to create a scene,” Steve says.

Natasha stops him from getting out, “Wait. Let me go. He’s less likely to cause a scene with me.”

“You’re yet to tell me what went down between you two.”

“He visited you fewer times than Tony.”

Steve winced. Tony had been so courteous as to visit him the grand total of once. “That’s cold.”

“Oh, c’mon, you go in there and by the time the strippers change sets you and James are going to end up punching it out over the bar,” Natasha reasons.

“And you two won’t?”

“Do you trust me? Or did prison take that too?”

Steve knows Natasha is right, the last time he saw Bucky was at his hearing, hovering in the back of the courtroom with that disappointed expression on his face, and he does trust Natasha, he does, it’s just… he’d been pretty shitty at delegating even without the wondrous and copious issues New Jersey Correctional Facility had given him, but, alas, he relents. 

“Don’t make a scene,” he grumbles.

“Maybe prison has reformed you,” Natasha says, smiling slightly. She’s not exactly ecstatic at the prospect of seeing James again, but Steve has a plan, it would be a shame to see it go to shit before they’ve even started because neither of them have any compunctions about beating the ever-loving fuck out of their best friend. She, on the other hand, knows James well enough that although he’s not afraid to hit a girl, he's far too overprotective of his reputation to hit a girl on a Friday night outside Hollywood’s third hottest club. “Stay put,” she says, patting him on his head as she leaves.

It takes less than a second for her to spot James at the bar downing a drink and half-heartedly eyeing the go-go dancers in front of him, then another second to find the backroom, distract the guard long enough to slip in, and make herself acquainted with the players patiently awaiting James’ arrival.

When James comes in, poorly constructed veil of enthusiasm barely shielding his face, he immediately pulls a face at Natasha as though there was a bad smell in the room. Or, well, a worse smell.

“What’s this?” James looks to the other players for some sort of answer, refusing to meet her eyes.

“Bouncer mentioned there was a game going on,” Natasha says, casually.

“Bouncer have a name?” James asks, icier than the Arctic. The only reason he hasn’t thrown her over his shoulder and tossed her into the bottle-filled dumpster out back is that she would absolutely and without hesitation dig his eye out of his socket with a poker chip, and he’s built somewhat of a reputation up around here that he would mourn to lose.

“Steve.”

Bucky practically feels his face set in stone. God fucking damn it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember to drink a water and maybe a vegetable xx
> 
> ++ _[The Lament for Icarus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lament_for_Icarus)_
> 
> tumblr: brucewaynery


	4. some old, not-friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i pulled a houdini xx

“You bring nothing but trouble,” Bucky grumbles, downing his drink, courtesy of Natasha.

“ _Steve_ brings nothing but trouble,” Natasha corrects, sipping on her own. She flags down the bartender for another.

“And you would think New Jersey fixed him.”

“It probably would have done something if his best friend had bothered to make the trip.”

If looks could kill, Natasha’s pretty sure she’d be making her way downstairs already, but alas, all James’ eyes can do is hold far more scathing and bitterness than she’s used to. If she were to tell someone that she’d once been witness to love and adoration from him, she’d get carted off to the nearest looney bin. Or worse, a shrink.

“You're not here to dig up old shit, Romanov.”

“Ever the perceptive, you are, Barnes.”

“Not that I’m not loving seeing my ex in my place of business, but cut to the chase already, Steve needs help getting out doesn’t he?”

“You don’t know?”

And there’s something about her tone that, just for a second, throws him off entirely. He’s not had the easiest life, and he hasn’t done much to make it easier, he’s been through shit, done stuff he’s not all too proud of, but that split second there, the heartbeat where his brain cliff-jumped to conclusions before logic set everything straight, the tiniest amount of feasibly time where he thought Steve had died was the worst.

Logic told him that Natasha isn’t cruel enough to drag something like that out, and Sam would be the one to tell him first, if he hadn’t gotten a call from the facility himself. Still, he can’t shake the feeling of pure dread. If Steve had died in prison, in goddamn _New Jersey_ , and the last time he would have seen him would have been when he got dragged away in cuffs in the courthouse, he doesn’t think he would be able to forgive himself. 

He catches himself just before he spirals into a pit of self-hatred, some ‘best-friend’ he is, because Natasha has that glint in her eye, the one that used to mean they were in for a fun night in some absent multimillionaire’s mansion, one that now means she’s playing him like a fucking violin.

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m not in control of your guilt complex, James.”

“Nat.”

“He’s waiting in the car.”

Amongst the throngs of up-and-coming actors and trust-fund kids on benders, James Rhodes and Pepper Potts stride down the street, doing god knows what. Steve’s good at hiding, you don’t (allegedly) steal hundreds of millions of dollars worth of various antiques and paintings without sneaking around some, and he knows when to slide down in his seat just so that the average person wouldn’t know he’s there, but by the sharp rap on the window, he’s cruelly reminded that James Rhodes and Pepper Potts are not the average person.

Steve, against his will, rolls down the window, and with as much dignity as he can gather, sits up straight, “Long time no see?”

“If you don’t give me a good reason not to, I will call LAPD and tell them we have a fugitive,” Pepper says, taking her phone out. Steve wouldn't be surprised if she had connections with the Chief of Police and the ability to prove the other crimes he’d been implicated in.

“Believe it or not, Ms. Potts, I’m a free citizen,” his lawyer had told him that he got parole by the skin of his teeth, and possibly only because one of the judges was young and had studied him back in college, but they didn’t need to know that.

“And you choose to spend your freedom here?”

“You’re not even a felon and you choose to spend your time here,” Steve spits back, squinting up at them, “finally shifted the stick from your ass?”

Steve knows it's a bad choice of words and a bad choice of phrase as soon as he says it, he could play the _I’ve been in prison for the past two years, excuse if my manners have fallen by the wayside_ card, but no one here would believe it. He’d clashed with them long before prison had any effect on his manners.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Rhodes cuts in, stepping in between Pepper and the car, “we just want to make sure that you’re not planning anything that’s going to leave Tony hurt again.”

“I’m reformed,” Steve says, “I promise.” 

“Well, don’t be offended if I don’t take the word of a criminal as gospel.”

“You didn’t tell me the entire family was here,” Bucky calls.

“That’s because they’re not, what are you doing?”

“Just checking in on him,” Rhodes says.

“Are you his parole officer?” Bucky snaps, “Fuck off.”

“James,” Nat says quietly.

Rhodes hooks an arm around Pepper, “Better keep him on his leash,” he says as they walk away.

“All you do is attract trouble,” Bucky grumbles, getting in the back.

Steve lasts the grand total of about two seconds before he’s asking Natasha, “Did you have to tell him I’m on parole?”

“I’m sorry, should I not have told your best friend your current legal situation?”

“Not when he was just going to yell it for Tony’s _best friends_ to hear!”

“Don’t fool yourself, you know that they probably have someone on the inside,” Bucky mutters. He almost wishes he was back teacher poker. Almost. “Besides, I’m not the snitch.”

Steve twists around as much as the car seat will allow, “Don’t go there. At least he visited me.”

“What, once? To give you divorce papers?”

Steve glanced away, “Fuck off.”

“He asked me to give them to you, dipshit. Do you really think he wanted to visit his little criminal husband?”

“What about you? The crime is all fun and good so long as your goddamn best friend doesn't end up behind bars?”

Bucky felt the strong compulsion to tear his hair out. “Do you hear yourself?”

“What’s your problem?”

Bucky stays mulishly silent as Natasha pulls into a driveway neither of them recognise.

“James, stay in the car, Steve, go knock on the door,” Nat says, in that voice that means she’s dangerously close to the end of her patience. “Now.”

“I did miss you, you know,” Steve tells Bucky, letting the car door slam behind him.

Steve would usually be slightly apprehensive about knocking on a stranger’s door in suburban LA, but, in all honesty, he’s more worried for Bucky.

The door opens before Steve's even started knocking.

“You know, I'm a little offended you didn't see me first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! comments + kudos are greatly appreciated <33


	5. fine.

Steve grins at the familiar face, “In my defence, _someone_ didn’t want to tell me where he lived.”

Sam shrugs, waving him in, “You could have figured it out. You left Barnes and Nat alone together?”

“They didn’t give me much choice,” it would be incredibly debilitating to both his plan and his interpersonal relationships if they decided to kill each other in Nat’s rental.

“Yeah, they tend to do that. Anyway, spill.”

“Spill?”

Sam pats Steve’s shoulder in the way one would to mollify a distraught child, “You’ll catch up on the modern lingo soon.”

“I was inside for two years! Spill is old slang!” Steve defends. 

“I see prison has done nothing for your habit of changing the topic.”

Steve scowls, “Stop doing your shrink-thing.”

“Stop changing the topic. What’s the plan.”

“Maybe I don’t have a plan. Maybe this is just a house call.”

“A house call? Like the way Washington in September of 2014 was a house call?”

“Well this one would be in Vegas, see,” Steve concedes. 

Sam grins, shakes his head, “Man, I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one.”

“Don’t fucking say shit like that, Rogers,” they hear Bucky snarl from behind them.

Steve knows it’s unfair, especially considering, well, everything, but he can’t help it. Thankfully, Nat shuts both of them up with a glare strong enough for them to table the inevitable argument. For now.

“Well. Go on then.”

“Right, it’s big,” Steve starts, hell, he’s barely sure if they can scrape together enough people who will still follow him to pull this off, but might as well act like he can, “bigger than what we’ve done before. We’ll need a big crew.”

“Guns?”

“Not loaded, no-one’s getting hurt,” Steve affirms.

“Glad to see your rules haven’t changed,” Bucky mutters. 

Steve carries on as though Bucky hadn’t spoken, “It needs to be very precise, there’s a lot of security, but the take–”

“What’s the target?”

“Eight figures each.”

“Target?” Bucky asks again.

“You said Vegas? You want to hit a casino?” Sam asks, confused. They’d done casinos before.

“Three,” Steve says, pulling out a folded piece of paper.

Sam looks over it. Steve was right about it there being a lot of security, it’s looks like just about the least accessible vault ever designed, and that’s without the guards. “The… Asgard vault?”

“It feeds into The Hermes and The Chitauri,” Natasha says, “those are all…”

“Laufeyson’s places,” Steve confirms. Bucky looks like if he were a cartoon he would have steam pouring out his ears and lasers shooting from his eyes straight into Steve’s prefrontal cortex. Steve makes the executive decision to deal with that later. “Think he’ll mind?”

Sam grins, “Just a little.”

Steve explains the plan to them and lets them ruminate over it. Even he can admit it’s a little outlandish and even more foolish, but if they manage to pull it off…

“We’d need a big crew, multiple cons simultaneously, I know you still have contacts around–”

“But where are you even going to get the money to back this? Off the top of my head, I'd say we’re looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, and a Leon Spinks. And probably the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.” Nat asks, cutting him off. Plans are all well and good but they’re worth jack if they don’t have the capital, and last she checked, none of them are millionaires. Yet. 

“Loki has a long list of enemies.”

“Enemies with nothing to lose, loose cash, and trust in… oh.”

“Oh?” Bucky speaks up for the first time in a while. He knows where this is going and he likes it even less.

“Fury.”

“Hm.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “Buck don’t do that.”

“You want to work for Mr. Paranoid–”

“Actually I’m pretty sure it’s Colonel Paranoid–”

Bucky completely steamrolls over him, “–to take from the Fort Knox of casinos? Why? And don’t fucking say money ‘cause we both know that’s not it.” 

“Well, why not?”

“Why not? Maybe because you could go back inside? Because the Asgard vault isn’t a little painting? Because you full well know that if you get caught Laufeyson won’t just come for you, he’ll come for your entire livelihood.”

“Good thing I don’t have much to lose.”

Bucky gives him a withering look. They’ve known each other long enough that Steve’s fully aware that if he’s not serious Bucky will walk straight out the door.

“Because yesterday I walked out of New Jersey with my entire wardrobe and a set of divorce papers, because we’re nothing compared to before, because the house always wins. You play long enough, never changing stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that special hand comes around, you bet big. And then you take the house. We’re taking the house.”

“Fucking fine,” Bucky grumbles out, “but we still need to talk, Rogers.” That’s all the warning Steve gets before he’s being dragged out of Sam’s living room and into the front yard.

“I want you to promise me that you won’t get caught.”

Steve looks at him incredulously, “Do I look like I have control over the police force?”

“Tony does.”

If it weren’t for the gaggle of children passing by, Steve would have decked Bucky right then and there. “Don’t bring him into this.”

“No! You know what? No! You’re not getting arrested over him! Not again. I told you I wasn’t going to see you in prison and I stood by that. You don’t get to be mad.”

“ _I don’t get to be mad_? I was behind bars!”

“Because of your own bullshit! Because you wanted too much and you lost it all!”

Steve grinds his teeth together, “Been talking to Tony?”

Bucky huffs, like he would ever voluntarily talk to Stark, “I watched the tape of his visit. You put on a good act.”

Steve remembers that day pretty well, he’d broken down crying in front of Tony, which hadn’t helped his reputation in the slightest, but like any half-decent con, he’d managed to just about turn the beating by the other inmates in his favour.

Steve takes a deep breath to centre himself before he throws the punch.

“You can’t punch your way out of everything,” Natasha reminds him, cleaning up the cut on his cheek as Sam tosses a bag of frozen peas to Bucky.

“You shouldn’t’ve stopped him,” Bucky grumbles.

“What and let the both of you land yourselves in the ER before we hit Asgard?”

“Glad to know your priorities are straight, Romanoff,” Steve says, wincing as she applies antiseptic.

“Like yours are? Drop the fucking prison bullshit, we do this as a team or not at all. Apologise, both of you.”

“I’m sorry for going to prison,” Steve says, acrimony dripping from every syllable. 

“Steve!” 

“I’m sorry you continually make bad decisions,” Bucky says, matching his tony with Steve’s.

“James.”

“You know I’m not going to stop, I… you know how much Tony means to me, and I know he sent me the papers but he didn’t... he didn’t sign them. He didn’t sign them and I’m not going to give up on him until…”

“Until he gives up on you?”

“Well,” Steve smiles ruefully, “I suppose.”

A beat of silence passes over them.

“I do realise why you’re… annoyed. I’ll deal with my marriage after all this. I’m done with secrets,” Steve continues.

“Fine,” Bucky acquiesces. 

“Fine?”

“Fine.”

“Right…” Sam says, slowly, “glad we got that over with. Time to find Col. Paranoia?”

“Sure, I wonder what he’ll say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love u <33


	6. hard and fast and damned foolish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> recruitment with a chaser of soft, loving, pre-'divorce' stevetony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recruitment time boys!  
> (i have never been to new jersey i personally have nothing against it but i assume that steve 'brooklyn, new york' rogers hates it on principle, i also have never been on the subway but i assume there's a similar etiquette to the underground ie. you make eye contact u die, i also have never experienced the intimacy described at the end. and that's that on disclaimers!)

“You’re out of your goddamn minds!”

Steve, admittedly, has to acquiesce to that. “It’s never been tried before…” he says, in an attempt to appeal to Fury’s daring and ambitious side.

Fury scoffs. “Oh, it’s been tried, three times, _unsuccessfully_. What do you have that the other three didn’t?”

“A divorce,” Bucky mutters under his breath. Nat steps in his foot under the table and he attempts to hide his wince, to no avail if Fury’s raised eyebrow suggests anything.

“I know casino security and these guys… they have enough ammo and people to occupy Paris. And even if you manage to make it out of there, with your money and your life you seemed to have forgotten that you’d still be in the middle of the fucking desert!”

“Would I go to you with a half-assed plan?” Steve challenges, then amends after Fury’s look, “Would Nat let me show you this with a half-assed plan?”

“Fine.”

“They’re Laufeyson’s places.”

Fury pauses for a second. He knows exactly why Steve and his little, soon to be expanded, gang came to him: he has money, an entirely justified vendetta against the greasy little fucker, and incredibly misplaced trust in Steve Rogers.

“If you’re going to steal from Loki Laufeyson you better be prepared for the aftermath. This sort of thing used to be civilised. You’d hit a guy, he’d whack you. Done. Laufeyson… at the end of this, he better not know you're involved, not know your names, or think you're dead. Because he'll kill you, and then he'll go to work on you.”

“I know,” Steve says, simply, “we’ve gotta be careful, precise. Well funded.”

“And batshit crazy,” Fury adds. “Who you got?”

“ _Well, we’ll need an AV guy…_ ”

Bucky watches the patrons of a coffee shop go about their daily routines, bleary-eyed students amongst immaculately dressed businesspeople interspersed with tired parents desperately trying to console their children, eventually finding Clint despite his seemingly desperate attempts to blend in with the haggard students, if his dress and general demeanour is anything to go by. Clint spots him barely a second after.

“What do you need?” Clint asks, pressing a hot drink into his hand a minute later.

“Can’t I just visit a friend?”

“Sure. Just a little sus’ that you’re making a social call less than a week after Rogers’ got out, don’t you think?”

Bucky grunts and doesn’t even question how he knows that Steve got out, instead, he presses a plane ticket and an address into his hand. “You better make it. He’s planning on taking down Loki,” he tells him before he does a significantly better job of blending into the crowds.

“ _...a demo guy…_ ”

_“Thor?” Steve suggests. Nat shakes her head._

_“Overseas.”_

_“Technically,” Sam interjects, “on the seas.”_

_Steve doesn’t groan aloud but it’s a near thing, “Don’t tell me he’s with…”_

_“Hey, last I heard he’s settling fantastically into the pirate life!”_

_“With a guy who takes advice from his pet raccoon.”_

_“With a guy who takes advice from his pet raccoon.”_

_To be fair, Steve doesn’t actively hate Quill and his gang of modern pirate mercenaries, he’s even worked with them before. But he does actively believe that Thor can do a lot better, though, if he’d blown up a small, mostly desolated Norweigian town and was on the run he too would go to sea._

_“Well, who else do we have?”_

Natasha watches from the safety of a cop car as alarms start blaring and, consequently, a stream of young, pretty criminals get arrested, Carol trailing behind at the end. She waits another minute, lets the real cops cuff her before she swoops in, flashes a badge and tells the disgruntled cop to “go get my partner, tell him we got this.” Under the guise of roughly handling her, she passes a set of materials to her, “That enough?”

Carol nods as Nat reminds the officer to go get her fictional partner. She hears a loud snap from behind Carol and she mutters “Thirty seconds.”

They make their way through the yellow tape, “Steve here?” Carol asks, tossing her makeshift explosive into an abandoned squad car.

“‘Round the corner,” Nat confirms, unlocking her handcuffs and tucking them into her pocket, “ten seconds?”

Carol grunts. “Almost. Be good working with professionals again.”

“Okay,” she says, after a beat, “go!” They both start running as Nat yells to her ‘colleagues’.

“Get down! There’s a bomb! Everybody down!!”

Amongst the chaos and mayhem, Carol and Nat manage to slip away mostly unnoticed; a baby in a strolling blinks distrustingly up at them as they pass them and their father, who appears to be very engaged in a phone call that seems to have taken a turn for the worst, but aside from that, they’ve made a fairly clean break.

“Captain.”

“Major.”

_“Matt?”_

_“Isn’t he still mad at me?”_

_“He’s also still working pro bono for cherry pie.”_

“You knock,” Steve tells Sam when they find themselves in front of a door that grandly declares that this is the location of _Nelson, Murdock & Page_.

Sam looks only slightly affronted. “Why me?”

“Matt doesn’t like me.”

Before they can carry on bickering the door swings open, and the man in question appears before their eyes. “Matt likes the Steve Rogers that doesn’t make him defend an undefendable case.”

“Aw, you think I’m undefendable?” Steev mocks, electing not to comment on the fact that 1. Matt talking in the third person heavily disturbs him, and he’s been to _Jersey_ , and 2. he plead guilty.

“Ignore him” Sam interjects.

“Often do.”

“We have a score. Big one. Vegas.”

If emotions could radiate from people, Matt would be screaming suspicion and distrust. He doesn’t do well in casinos far too much input, though he has enough faith in Steve that he’s pretty sure he’ll never actually cross the threshold. “I’m the whole list, aren’t I?”

Steve looks in betrayal at Sam, “He’s the whole list?” Sam, as he also often does, ignores Steve.

“Combination of cons. One night. $150 million between us.”

“You’re lucky it’s a slow week,” Matt grumbles, before he shuts the door in their face.

“Well. That went better than I thought it would.”

Sam just rolls his eyes and shoves Steve in the general direction of out.

_“Eight should be enough, right?”_

_Nat shrugs, mentally ticks through their current roster and matches the skill sets to jobs and watches Steve do the same._

_“You think we need one more?”_

_Nat shrugs, tilts her head. She could do it, Matt could probably do it but..._

_“You think we need one more.”_

_Nat shrugs again._

_“Okay. we’ll get one more.”_

Steve doesn’t often get the subway. It brings back… interesting memories. This time, he’s not going particularly anywhere, just watching a guy who looks barely old enough to graduate high school - by recommendation of JJJ. The train comes to a sudden stop and all the commuters sway forth with the air of people who have come to expect it land have given up fighting it, like a child with a broken backpack, with the exception of Parker. He, committing subway etiquette blasphemy, bumps into a guy who looks like he believes he’s too good for the subway, sleek, well-dressed Wall Street type. Steve has fond memories of breaking into guys like his houses. Parker, in one of the smoothest lifts Steve’s ever seen, takes the guy’s Apple watch and his wallet, muttering a shy, bashful, “Sorry,” after.

Steve follows him, unnoticed, as he gets off the packed train into an even more crowded station. He’s not in any rush: he’s done this before. Parker fluidly dodges the crowds with the ease of a kid who grew up here, who grew up blending in without any intention of hiding. 

Steve brushes up against him, without acknowledging him in the slightest and forges on, plan fulfilled. All he has to do it wait. Then, out of pure curiosity, he doubles back and follows him through a series of back alleys until he reaches the backside an apartment complex flirting with ‘decrepit’. Parker takes maybe two steps back before swinging himself up 2, 3, 4 floors via the fire escape. A broad skillset could get one very far in this world.

Up in apartment 4C, Peter Parker empties his pockets to find the Apple watch and, instead of the overstuffed wallet, to his dismay, he unpockets a business card with a name, location, and time. Well, if he’s going to be kidnapped at least the culprit has been kind enough to give their name - possibly an alias, the primary location - a relatively popular diner, and the time - dinner.

When he gets to Ditko & Lee, a man, steely-eyed and ruggedly handsome with the beard, makes eye contact with him. On the tabletop next to a half-drunk cup of coffee, there’s the wallet from the Wall Street guy. Against all better instincts, Peter approaches him.

“Who are you?” Peter asks, a name just doesn’t cut it for him.

“Friend of JJJ,” Steve replied. Peter supposes he intended to be vague and somewhat mysterious and elusive, but to Peter’s admittedly limited knowledge, Mr. Jameson doesn’t actually have that many friends. “Sit down.”

Peter sits.

Out of his jacket pocket, Steve brings out a plane ticket and places it parallel to the wallet. He keeps his hand over it. “This is a plane ticket, job offer. In or out, right now.”

“What if I say no?”

Steve shrugs. “We get someone not as good and you can go back to… petty pickpocketing, Peter Parker.”

He considers it. It could be a trap, what for, he’s not entirely sure, but he’s come across many a shady person in his life. Steve is definitely shady, but he feels like he wouldn’t screw him over. Peter thinks it’s the eyes.

He looks down at the wallet and the ticket, equidistant from him. One or the other. Take it or leave it.

Steve, as a test for more his own enjoyment than anything else, decides to signal a passing waitress for a refill. When he turns back to the table the wallet is still there, but the ticket is gone. 

“That’s the best lift you’ve done yet,” Steve had, at the very least, expected to feel it. Maybe he’s losing his touch, getting soft. 

“Las Vegas, huh?”

Steve shrugs. “America’s playground.”

“I didn't know you owned casinos?” Steve said rolling over to face Tony properly. It’s stupidly late, a kind of late that’s really far too much into the next day to really, feasibly be perceived as stupidly late and really, is stupidly early, early enough that the sun’s begun it’s daily rise, streaming in soft, pale dawn light through Steve’s loft’s windows. They’d stayed up the entire night, just talking, actually getting to know each other.

“Technically,” Tony said, fighting a yawn, “I don’t. A subsidiary of Stark Industries owns the bank that owns some of the casinos down there.” His hair was messy, not intentionally, black-and-white photoshoot in a workshop that’s actually very well composed soundstage, but ridiculous bedhead messy. Steve rarely found Tony not gorgeous, but right now, curled in his comforter, light casting long, lazy shadows dancing around the room, Tony seemed so vulnerable and trusting and open and he knew it was way too early for words as strong as these, but he was falling, he’s falling hard and fast and all he could think was _I love you_.

So instead he made a stupid joke. The type that you would only find even the slightest bit funny if you had been awake for over a day and now found yourself in a situation where time moved like sticky sweet syrup, where urgency had never bothered to be invented, where you’re so drunk on intimacy and love you can barely see what’s ahead of you, and honestly, in that moment, in the moment where nothing else exists and it feels like the world was made for you and for them and for you to be together in that moment, you can’t care that you can’t see what’s looming ahead.

“Casino’s are like… fairgrounds for adults. With greater consequences,” Steve wasn’t sure if the sentence even makes sense, but Tony giggled and he found that he couldn’t care for grammatical structure and other such follies.

“America’s playground,” Tony mumbled, far more interested in pressing feather-light kisses to Steve’s jaw, tender and loving. Maybe, Steve let himself think, let himself hope that he felt it too. Hard and fast and damned foolish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm. soft and slightly jaded stevetony to make up for the previous lack thereof. thought u deserved it xx


	7. the start of a simpler time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve meeting in London, what causes an NYU professor to visit the UK?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sry this is late, got hit w the bad vibes like a carsalesman slapping a vehicle, enjoy some absurdly hubris-ridden, past steve and tony! (but at least now i have an outline!)

Despite being in the game for a few years at this point, passing through museum security always put him on edge, regardless of his ability to talk himself out of handcuffs time and time again and his physical advantage over the two, bored senseless guards. Bucky told him it was good to be on edge as it has a tendency to keep one hyperalert. _Lose focus for one second and someone gets hurt_. 

He’s not a newbie anymore, hell, he’s at a point where he has multiple, relatively legit fake IDs, he’s run big cons on his own and, if, when he gets back stateside he has a real job.

“Enjoy the function, Mr. Charney,” one of the security guards says with a nod, already moving on to the next one. Steve nods back, deftly tucking his ID into his wallet and fixing the clasp on his watch. The driver’s license wasn’t his best work, but after his Twining alias got flagged and sufficiently burned, he’d had to make another, quickly. Nat had given him a little heat for the new name, but it had gotten him through UK Customs well enough, and they all know that international borders are the best test for an ID, second only to another forger. In an ideal circumstance, he wouldn’t have to be crossing international borders, but needs must when he’s being run out of the States. Hopefully, Matt will have things sorted but the time they’re done here. Steve tells himself to focus, his personal issues concerning his possible impending statelessness aren’t going to help them here.

He takes the long route to the Draper, they have Peggy and Sam in their ears, directing them. This job doesn’t take a lot, not at this stage anyway, you’d think galleries would stop putting on fundraisers and functions with how much it helps people like Steve, but alas, they have far too much faith in criminals. The relative cacophony of a party allows for far better cover than anything they could have come up with themselves, and this one isn’t even manipulated. This one’s an easy job, a simple switch, no need to goad anyone, though Steve really couldn’t help himself when he made the forgery. He’ll concede to the general stereotype that thieves have far too much hubris, for once. 

He takes a second to admire the Draper, a second to revel in the fact that he’ll soon be the owner of it and no-one would be the wiser. It’s a good feeling. Peggy tells him to get a move on.

Bucky’s got the forgery in a janitor’s cart, Nat’s guiding rich British folk around various paintings, nodding with fake inquisitiveness at every guy who decides he’s got masters in art history because he decides understands what Anish Kapoor was attempting in _Untitled_. Steve’s really glad he won the coin flip, on what he maintains is a perfectly balanced coin, despite what Bucky says. Really, it’s not the coin’s fault of Bucky continually gets the ‘janitor’ role - they’d flipped both a 50 pence and a quarter.

Peggy tells him to socialise, as he will, eventually, have to go back to the States and start his job. Apparently, being cultured is somewhat important for a liberal arts professor. _Two birds with one stone_. 

So he takes his time, wanders about, takes in the art, mentally filing away teaching points, flirts around a little without any real feeling. He’s been warned away from romance far too much to consider anything more than a one night stand, and in the middle of a job really isn't the best time (he’s learnt the easy way through Bucky learning the hard way). Romance, in their profession, is kept entirely for marks. Because you either get with someone you work, and the adage ‘don’t shit where you eat’, rings true even amongst the lawless, or get with an innocent person who eventually either finds out about your side job and leaves, or finds about your side job and gets caught up in it.

Now, Steve may be a criminal and more often than not, on the other side of the law, but he’s not a deplorable guy.

Sam gives him a time-check when he’s made a lap of the gallery and has a nice stack of contact cards from wealthy people - if they still have time in the UK after this, Steve might pitch another con, some of those people could stand to lose something, maybe the guy who’d groped him, winked, and offered to show him ‘his Manet’ (although they were standing in front of a Monet, but that’s neither here nor there), or maybe the woman who’d complained for an inordinate amount of time about the influx of immigrants and how they were a detriment to the economy, thanking him for not being ‘like them’ - regardless, he still has ten minutes left until Sam cuts the power. Time for more socialising! 

Scanning the room he’s currently in - modern art - his eyes catch on a guy wearing sunglasses and a tailored suit (that’s really, _really_ well-tailored) with a gorgeous woman on his arm. Steve’s pretty sure he’s seen him somewhere before, maybe in the Classics exhibit. The woman wanders off, whispering something in the guy’s ear, and Steve decides to have some fun.

“Hey,” Steve says, low, standing close enough behind him to smell his cologne - something expensive, probably niche - but far enough to be friendly. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nat roll her eyes, in his ear, Sam groans out complains that he’s not here to get lucky. Peggy, as she’s done all night, tells them to focus.

The guy turns, not surprised by him, and smiles a smile that ends somewhere between a rich guy, ‘I’m better than you’ grin and a gay guy ‘Are you homosexual-adjacent, perchance?’ look, “It’s nice to hear an American around,” he says, in lieu of a proper greeting.

“Likewise,” Steve says, catching his eye, returning the second half of his smile. He’s a little shorter than Steve, just so that Steve, in the event that they would be kissing, would have to tilt his head down a little. “What brings you here?”

“Oh,” the guy says, waving a hand around, gesturing towards nothing in particular, “you know.”

Steve raises an eyebrow, humouring him lightly, “I don’t, actually.”

The guy laughs, caught off-guard, almost like he’s forgotten himself, “Tony Stark,” he admits, the way one would have to disclose a criminal record, proffering his hand, manicured, ringless. Steve takes it, lingering slightly longer than one would necessarily consider ‘friendly’.

“It’s a pleasure,” Steve says, he knows better than to give a name, regardless of how much he wants to hear Tony, in his perfectly tailored suits and perfectly slicked-back hair, scream it.

It doesn’t pass Tony’s notice that he hasn’t given a name - he hasn’t to anyone tonight, and Tony’s the first to notice, but ultimately, it doesn’t seem to matter to him.

“What brings _you_ over to this dreary island,” Tony asks, leaning a little closer. They’re both facing the painting in front of them, neither paying its due attention.

“Oh,” Steve says, mimicking Tony from earlier, “you know.” 

Tony huffs a laugh, “Well, if you must know, my secretary thinks it’s good I make international appearances, good for the company and all that.” Steve decides to not press him on the Stark Industries issue, sure he knows who Tony Stark of Stark Industries is, everyone does, but right now, he’s far more interested in the guy in front of him who’s still yet to grace them with his uncovered eyes. “Now your turn.”

“Art professor, NYU, doing some research, visiting some friends,” Steve says, his personal life had become shorter and shorter as the evening progressed, and quite frankly, he’s pretty sure that Tony's only interested in his shoulder span than what he does for a living, not that he’s complaining.

“Going back when term starts?”

Steve makes a noncommittal noise, if his aliases hold up, if Matt does his thing. Tony, of course, doesn’t know that. Either way, he has time; almost two months.

“And yourself? Headed out on a private jet the second this is over?”

“Might be convinced to stay another day,” Tony says, smile bordering on wicked.

Steve returns his smile and drags his eyes down Tony’s body, slowly, deliberately. In his ear, Sam gives the one minute warning. Steve doesn’t actually have much to do right now, he’s just back up and the wheels, other than gather knowledge and become cultured and hopefully laid. He did his share earlier; the forgery, the planning.

Steve and Tony continue eye-fucking whilst carrying out a rather mild conversation about how the blues play with the purples in the painting in front of them and the effect of the impasto on the mood and atmosphere, until, of course, they’re plunged into darkness. 

It takes half a minute for the emergency lighting to turn on and another minute for the full power to come back. The chaos a mere ninety seconds of powerlessness caused in the gallery was something Steve revelled in, the world undone so easily, it would make anyone want to stop to smell the roses. 

Steve, ever the gentleman, hands Tony off to his companion whilst the emergency lights are on, murmuring in his ear, “I’ll be sure to see you around,” as he slips a card into his pocket.

By the time the lights are back in full force, the museum is short one _Lamet for Icarus_ , and Tony Stark has the distinct feeling that he might see the unnamed guy with the incredibly impressive shoulders again.

Amongst the frenzy, it’s easy to slip out unnoticed. It’s still pretty light outside, nearly curbing upon ‘dusk’, daylight savings and the tilt of the earth being what it is, especially with the solstice barely out of the rearview mirror, he couldn’t have expected anything else. The painting is already in the car when Steve gets to it, he’ll drive back to Peggy’s, Buck and Nat will come back separately, and if all goes well, they lie low for a bit, check on Matt, maybe they’ll consider another con, maybe they’ll go home. 

The next morning, Steve wakes up on Peggy’s couch with the left-over buzz of a well-played heist (if all goes well, they won’t even notice they have a forgery until a private collector wants to buy it - the bourgeoisie, Steve’s found, are awfully paranoid of being sold forgeries) and a text from Tony: _Wanna convince me to stay another day?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!!


	8. what's the worst that could happen?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heist planning with some pre-divorce stevetony!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> greetings criminals xx

It doesn’t take them long to know the casino inside out, by the end of the week, they have recon done, they know the casino probably better than the regular gamblers, they have a direct stream and control of the surveillance feed, a fully working replica of the vault, and their transport.

“You have me stalking the most powerful man in Vegas? All week?” Peter says, in disbelief, when Steve tells him his role at the start of the week.

“You’re a kid. Kids get training wheels,” Steve says firmly, crossing his arms and looking down at Peter.

“I’m almost 22!”

“I don’t care. Walk before you run and all that.”

Peter wanders away, possibly to pick Sam’s brain. Or irritate the absolute sanity out of him. 

“I can see why you were such a good teacher,” Bucky mutters, staring at the blueprint in front of them.

“Fuck off,” Steve says, without any heat, moving around their figurines.

“Do you think NYU will hire an ex-convict? Or maybe Columbia?” Bucky teases, grinning. Steve shoves him, gleefully dispelling any thoughts about what he’s going to do after this. He gets his revenge… then what? More crime? As loathe as he is to admit it, who the fuck is going to hire an ex-con? 

Instead of falling into a crisis, Steve asks Bucky a question he already knows the answer to and directs the others to vaguely ‘do better’. It doesn’t make him feel any better in the slightest. 

“Okay,” Peter says, after giving Bucky the rundown of Loki’s entire day. The kid’s green, like pastures-in-the-countryside, hex code 00FF00, _green_ , but he’s good, diligent. And without a record, yet. If he were a sentimental man, he would say that he reminds him of Steve at that age. If. 

“The man is a machine,” Peter concludes, blissfully ignorant to Bucky’s thoughts, “are you suicidal?!”

Bucky gives him a grin, the one that makes mothers with babies cross the street and policemen keep an eye on him, “Only in the morning, kid.”

Peter, as he probably should do, ignores him to stare at the doors of the casino (they’re near back, by the slot machines), “He comes in with a man, his boyfriend I think, now.”

And by his word, Loki walks in dressed in a three-piece with his hair slicked back and an absolutely insufferable expression on his face. And on his arm is Tony Stark.

“I’m pretty sure the other guy is kinda famous?” Peter says, once again blissfully ignorant to Bucky’s inner turmoil, “but like, Elon Musk famous, if he was more… normal?”

“Tell me this isn’t about him. Or I’ll walk off right now.”

“Him?”

“Don’t play fucking stupid, Tony’s with Laufeyson. Tell me this isn't about screwing the guy who's screwing your husband,” Bucky growls. If Steve were a lesser man he’d be utterly terrified.

“Ex.”

“Stop playing around. Tell me.”

Steve sighs, he’s lucky that Bucky got him when there wasn’t anyone else around, “You said you needed a reason, a real reason, well this is mine. When we started in this business, we had three rules. We weren't gonna hurt anybody. We weren't gonna steal from anybody didn't have it coming. And we were gonna play the game like we had nothing to lose. Well, I lost something. Someone. That's why I'm here.”

Bucky knows damn well the rules they had when they started all this, and he knows that Steve knows that he knows them better than the Constitution. 

“Here's the fucking problem: we're stealing two things now. And when push comes to shove, if you can't have both, which are you gonna choose?”

A beat passes. Bucky is fully aware that Steve has never been able to make a choice between millions and Tony, between anything and Tony. He’s not entirely sure if Steve knows that too.

“If things go to plan, I won't be the one who has to make that choice,” Steve says, quietly, simply. Some days, he just wants to take the man he calls his best friend and hit him over the head with a brick. 

“How’d he look… Tony?” Steve asks tentatively.

“I’ve seen him happier.” Bucky grants him that, at the least.

“You’re good, you’re… really good,” Tony says, once he catches his breath. He finally does get the name of the man in a black turtleneck: Steve. He’d told him in between sucking bruises against his collarbone, like something to be forgotten the next morning… which… yeah, that’s fair.

“So are you, Tony,” Steve says, grinning. Tony’s utterly in limerence with the way Steve’s tongue curls around his name (and other things). The pomade in his hair has lost all effect and thus his bangs are falling into his eyes and messily over his forehead and, God, he’s gorgeous. 

“Where you going back to?” Tony asks, basking in the afterglow for just a little longer.

“Brooklyn, yourself?”

“Manhattan,” Tony replies, ruefully. Even if they were going back to the same borough, there’s no chance they would cross paths.

“Shame,” Steve murmurs, very deliberately trailing his eyes down Tony’s body.

They linger just a little longer, trailing fingers and kisses on a path to nowhere until a phone chimes somewhere in the room, tossed haphazardly amongst trousers and shirts and shoes, and knocking them out of their little bubble. 

“Call me, if you get bored in that tower of yours,” Steve says, placing a hand on the small of his back and teasing at the hickey that’s just peeking out of Tony’s collar after they get dressed, before he slips out the door with one, final, sweet kiss to the corner of his mouth. It had taken them far too long to put their clothes back on, getting distracted by each other over and over, pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

Tony turns the business card over in his hands. There’s no name, just a number. Against, probably, his better judgement, he types the number into his contacts. _What’s the worst that could happen?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! feel free to leave any predictions for the rest of the team/the plot/what steve rogers will ill-advisedly do next in the comments!
> 
> love u + hope you're doing well xx
> 
> tumblr: brucewaynery


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